Critical Theory and the urge for progress

The opening panel of the 2017 Critical Theory Summer School was devoted to the role of progress in Critical Theory. Understood as a kind of learning process or even the trajectory of history overall, progress has played a central role in Critical Theory from the beginning. At the same time, it has been regarded as highly ambivalent, as entangled with regression and as tied to very specific understandings of historical development. Amy Allen, Robin Celikates, Axel Honneth, Rahel Jaeggi and Terry Pinkard opened the debate by sketching their reconceptualizations of progress and situated it within their take on the project of Critical Theory.